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Category talk:Noblemen
Let's try it this way first and see how many of each country we can assemble. This also has the advantage of being open to fantasy characters. Turtle Fan 17:08, 29 November 2008 (UTC) :That works. I suspect the broad category will do it for now. TR 17:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC) If you change your mind, be advised that as of this writing we have twenty English/British nobles, two French, six Germans (to whom we could add George V if we really, really wanted), four Spanish, one Irish, and twenty from various fictional societies (which though I haven't checked would surely be whittled into next to nothing once they've been bracketed each in their own society) plus an infuriating 54th whom I somehow keep missing no matter how many times I count. Only the British would merit their own category, and we can't cordon off just them; a rare piece of wisdom I got from my usually-loopy 12th grade AP European History teacher was "When you cut something in half, make sure you have two parts." Thus I endorse your suspicions and recommend leaving it as is. Turtle Fan 21:08, 29 November 2008 (UTC) We may have enough for a miscellaneous Royalty category. There are several characters in Noblemen who are in fact related directly to a given monarch, and are more than just mere nobles. TR 19:57, 13 January 2009 (UTC) :We could do that--But they maintain their nobility status just the same, yes? Happily, being a citizen of a republic, I've never had to worry about such things. Turtle Fan 20:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC) ::I thought that being Royal by definition means that you are a noble? ::ML4E is our go to on this. He should weigh in. TR 20:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC) :::Royals outrank nobles, and you can be both at once. William the Conqueror, for instance, maintained his duchy of Normandy when he became King of England. However, I'm nearly certain they're not the same thing. :::Furthermore, I don't believe there's a hard-and-fast rule. In Imperial Russia you could hardly swing a cat without hitting a Prince, and hardly any of them were Tsars' sons or grandsons or brothers or nephews or anything like that. In Britain by contrast monarchs' sons and brothers are Dukes. :::Canada has royalty but I don't believe it has nobility, other than knights and dames and non-hereditary titles like Right Honourable. Of course I don't pretend to be an expert. :::Ah, thank God for republicanism. Turtle Fan 03:32, 14 January 2009 (UTC) ::::My understanding is that Royalty is part of the Nobility. There are all sorts of ranks so a Duke outranks an Earl (or the other way, I'm unsure) and so forth with the Monarchy outranking the rest. As TF says, British Royalty have other, nobility titles. For instance, Prince Andrew (Charles' younger brother) is the Duke of York. Elizabeth granted him the title when he reached adulthood so its not an automatic inheritance. ML4E 05:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC) ::::Canada has Elizabeth as Queen of Canada and Charles is her heir and that's it. Knighthoods are no longer granted (since legal changes in the 1930s I believe) while "Honourable" and "Right Honourable" are honorifics like "Your Worship" when addressing a Mayor or "Your Grace" to a Bishop. The first is for cabinet members while the second is reserved for the Prime Minister. ML4E 05:06, 14 January 2009 (UTC) :::::Dukes outrank earls. Don't ask me how I know that but I do. I'm a little shakier going down from there but I know Duke is the highest title after King or Prince and I'm fairly sure Earl is number two. As for Blaise's question about whether a baron or a marquis is higher, I believe it's a marquis. :::::I'm surprised that Canadians can't be knighted. First I've heard of it, anyway, though apparently it's been true throughout my lifetime, and my parents'. :::::I knew Right Honourable was for ex-PMs (Is it also for ex-Governors-General? I seem to remember reading that it is.) as in Britain itself. I suppose it wouldn't count as nobility, but it is a title. . . . Oy, I'm even more confused than I was when we were confining our discussion to countries ruled by their monarchs directly. :::::But ML4E tells us that royals are nobles. So what are we going to do? Move Monarchs into this category? I don't like that idea; we have several non-hereditary monarchies represented in the former category, like the Roman emperors. As for people who are royalty but not monarchs, like Arthur Albert, it seems like it's appropriate to leave them here. Turtle Fan 05:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC) ::::::No, moving monarchs into nobles makes no sense. Having Royals a subcat of nobles (should the category be worth creating) is an ok idea. TR 22:09, 14 January 2009 (UTC) :::::::I'm still not sold on the idea's being worthwhile. Turtle Fan 07:49, 15 January 2009 (UTC) ::::::After reading all the crap above, neither am I. TR 15:41, 15 January 2009 (UTC) :::::Huzzah for Rule By Committee! Turtle Fan 18:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC) Now for something completely different I noticed some of the articles are alphabetizied by last name, others by title. Any reason for this? ML4E 21:11, October 2, 2009 (UTC) :Probably just inconsistency of sorting. My attitude is that if history remembers say E.F.L. Wood as simply Lord Halifax, it is probably better to list him under Halifax. TR 23:04, October 2, 2009 (UTC) ::We used to do some just by name and some just by title. Then we made a policy of doing all by both. I assume that we moved them to new article names without changing the Defaultsorts. Turtle Fan 19:07, October 3, 2009 (UTC) Looking over the names, they do seem to follow the pattern TR states and definitely not all by last name. The only exception is a couple of The Gap characters who are listed by "first" name but those might be family names in that culture. Looks like the change in plicy wasn't implemented or, as you say, no one went back and changed the Defaultsorts. ML4E 19:14, October 3, 2009 (UTC) :Gap characters who are noblemen just have names like Count Hamnet Thyssen and Earl Eyvind Torfinn, not Hamnet Thyssen, Fourth Count of Horseshit-Horseshit. The barbarians seem to be another matter; Trasamund is very clearly Jarl of the Three-Tusk Clan, or was when said clan existed; but jarls are (were) sovereign monarchs, not feudal lords nor people who've been granted honorifics. :I've long gone back and forth on whether they should be alphabetized as Hamnet Thyssen or Thyssen, Hamnet. The books are not clear on the matter; characters usually refer to each other by full name, which is maddeningly unhelpful. Since writing about Gap characters commands such a pathetically small share of my interest, I'm not waiting with baited breath for a resolution to be made. Turtle Fan 01:37, October 5, 2009 (UTC) Rank If anyone's interested, I did a little census of this page and counted each member only once, by his or her highest rank (though I didn't count anyone who was also a prince, of whom we have two, or a king, of whom we have five; I counted them as their next-highest rank). We have seventeen dukes (including one Grand Duke and two Archdukes), thirteen earls, five marquesses (sp?), twelve counts, six viscounts, nine barons (and by the way, both missions to Minerva declared that domain-masters are roughly equivalent to barons, though I'd question what the citizens of a republic and a Marxist dictatorship, respectively, would know about such things), three CBEs, and twelve people whose ranks either are not given in Turtledovean canon or have no clear equivalent in the structures to which we're accustomed. Every one of those could become its own category, should we ever desire greater precision. It has relevance as a plot point, too: both Derlavai and Detina see conflicts based on noble rank from time to time. For instance, a lieutenant-general who is also a duke might not be perfectly subordinate to a general who is also a count, or a countess might berate her brother for marrying a mere baroness. There was also Victor Radcliff's confusion in USA when Lafayette joined the Atlantean army and he, Radcliff, couldn't remember whether a marquess or a baron is higher. That didn't become a plot point, though. Turtle Fan 15:42, September 4, 2010 (UTC) :I didn't realize this proposal was on the table. I'll give it a retroactive "yes" vote, of course. TR 04:24, October 17, 2010 (UTC) ::I had forgotten about it. Then I was looking for an excuse to procrastinate. I figured no one had noticed and no one would object seriously. ::As I went I wondered whether the same would work for the monarchs. Mostly they come in two varieties, Kings and Emperors; the only regnant prince HT has given us is Gerin (who was also a king, of course) and I've thus far been disappointed in half-expecting someone to say "Luxebourg may be out of the fight, but Grand Duchess Charlotte is finding ways to piss on the Nazis." Or maybe in HW when Walsh is talking to the other Brit about how much Leopold sucks, say "Wow, he's even worse than the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg was in the last war! You know, Charlotte's sister." Either would work for me, but neither materialized. ::All this would really entail would be putting a bunch of people into an Emperors sub-cat. German Emperors, Roman Emperors, Raumsdalian Emperors, and Videssian Avtokrators would be sub-sub-cats. The British monarchs between Victoria and George VI would be added to Emperors without being removed from British Monarchs. Ditto Napoleon and his idiot nephew. Various emperors who are hanging out in the Miscellaneous Monarchs article. Also, isn't there a page of Lizard emperors consisting of Risson XXXVII, complete with link, and the handful who had ships named after them? Turtle Fan 05:04, October 17, 2010 (UTC) :::The recent edits at Manchukuo sort of sent my mind in a similar direction. It's a distinction worth making, I think. I suggest that the German Emperors are basically in the same situation as the British Monarchs; aside from Frederick the Great, everyone else in there was both monarch of Prussia and German Emperor (or Emperor of Austria). TR 05:35, October 17, 2010 (UTC) ::::It is a distiction worth making. Rarely has it been valuable in Turtledove works; perhaps in the scenes in HFR when they ruminate on German unification. Of HT's monarchical POVs, one is an emperor in a nation that hasn't had any kings in memory, one works his way up to king in a region too small, poor, and undeveloped to support an empire, and one's just a con man who pretends to be king in a country which doesn't really rate a kingship, let alone an emperorship. ::::In most cases an emperor implies a much greater, more potent state than a king would, but not always. History's full of kings who were more powerful than emperors, and especially in northern Asia, where every ruler started putting on imperial airs in the twentieth century. Again speaking of Manchukuo, even they had an emperor, and they were a shithole if there ever was one. Turtle Fan 12:35, October 17, 2010 (UTC)